President Obama, reports Dwvin Dwyer this morning on ABCNews, “has spent the past three months railing against a ‘do-nothing Congress,” and tonight he has the opportunity to deliver his message face to face.”   As the Democrat demagogues a legislature that won’t rubberstamp his priorities, he will certainly obscure one fact:  Congress is not a completely Republican, but a divided, institution.  The House, to be sure, is Republican, but the Senate remains Democratic.

And it’s that Senate that hasn’t been doing much of anything.  Speaker John Boehner reports, for example, that “Thirty jobs bills passed over the last year in a Republican House of Representatives that are sitting in the United States Senate“.   And “today marks the 1,000th day since the Senate Democratic majority . . .  approved a federal budget.”  One thousand days.  That’s about as long as Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII’s second wife, reigned as Queen of England.

“The federal government“, observe the editors of the Washington Examiner

. . . still managed to pile nearly $4 trillion onto the national debt as the Senate dithered during those 1,000 days. The Senate forced the federal government to function piecemeal for three years through a series of haphazardly stitched-together omnibus bills and continuing resolutions. These bring together in one massive document trillions in spending and borrowing that can then be jammed through Congress with one convenient up-or-down vote, with only token debate and few if any amendments allowed. It’s Washington’s nice and tidy way of handing voters a take-it-or-leave-it approach to federal spending.

Wonder if Obama will fault his fellow partisan Harry Reid for leading a do-nothing legislative chamber?  Wonder if our friends in the legacy media will even note the thousand days.*

As usual, Democrats will try to blame Republicans for their mistakes as John Hinderaker reports:

Democrats like Dick Durbin and Nancy Pelosi have tried to blame their dereliction of duty on the Republicans, claiming that it would be futile to propose a budget since the Republicans would filibuster it. As usual, the Democrats rely on ignorance: under the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, budgets pass the Senate by a simple majority and cannot be filibustered.

In contrast to the Democratic Senate, the current Republican House passed a budget just over 100 days after being sworn in.  This year, the president will again miss the statutory deadline for submitting a budget.  Last year, his budget couldn’t even garner a single Democratic vote in the Senate. (more…)

. . . or counterproductive, bear two things in mind:

1. The Senate still has a Democratic majority.
2. Americans elected Republicans to redress the excesses of the president’s policies not to rubber stamp them, or, to paraphrase that Democrat, “They won.”

At least since the 2004 the then-state Senator delivered his paean to national unity at the Democratic National Convention, there have been two Barack Obamas, the inspiring orator aspiring to transcend partisan politics and the bare-knuckled Chicago politician seeking to advance his own partisan interests.

On the one hand, the Democrat claims he’s “trying to break [that] pattern in Washington where everybody is always looking for somebody else to blame.”  On the other, he’s always looking for someone to blame for his failures.  It’s as if George W. Bush were still pulling the political strings and Democrats had not had overwhelming majorities in the 111st Congress–Barack Obama’s first two years in the White House.

Yesterday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney blamed Republicans for the increase in demand for food stamps since Obama’s inauguration:

Carney turned Newt Gingrich’s description of President Obama as the “food stamp president” around on Republicans, whom Carney blamed for the increased need for food stamps. ”The economic policies that helped create [the recession],” Carney said about Gingrich, “are the kinds of policies that he advocates to this day.”

Now, he’s blaming the GOP for his decision to reject the Keystone Pipeline:

Obama said he was not acting on the merits of TransCanada Corp.’s plan, but instead was forced to make the decision based on the “arbitrary” deadline mandated by GOP provisions in December’s payroll tax cut extension deal.

Oh, and, one more thing: James Taranto offers some interesting statistics:

In the three-year period CBS ascribes to Obama, the food-stamp rolls have increased by 18 million people, or 6 million a year. In the seven years attributed to Bush, the increase was 10.9 million, or 1.6 million a year. Almost four times as many Americans have gone on food stamps every year during the Obama years than during the Bush years, and the percentages are not increasing as quickly precisely because the numbers are.

I’m pretty sure that’s Bush’s fault.

A reader alerted me to the latest episode of South Park which takes on #OWS, linking this post where Christian Toto offers a summary of the episode, including this line from Cartman, “Don’t you get it, Mom? People voted for Obama, and now that everything sucks they have to blame me!”

Shouldn’t these folks be #Occupying the Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

NB:  Oops, inadvertently published this piece before I was done writing it, so delayed the publication as I was editing.

Ever since I “liked” Paul Ryan on Facebook, I have been treated on my own page to updates from this accomplished and principled young man, including this own today which echoes something we addressed on this very blog:

This fetching Wisconsin Republican has put forward a budget plan which passed the U.S. House. The president’s only released budget plan for the current fiscal year couldn’t even garner one Democratic vote in the U.S. Senate.

Remind me again, who’s calling whose branch of government a “do-nothing” institution?

Despite the president’s campaign contention to be a new kind of politician, one who would rise above ideological divisions to unite the nation, he — and his team — have a very poor understanding of why Republicans oppose his policies.  They can’t seem to understand that most conservatives just don’t believe his “stimulus” would stimulate growth or that his jobs bill would create jobs.

Instead, as Greg Sargent reports, White House political advisor David Axelrod is telling CNN’s Candy Crowley that Republicans might be sabotaging the economy on purpose:

They don’t want to cooperate. They don’t want to help. Even on measures to help the economy that they traditionally have supported before, like a payroll tax cut, like infrastructure, rebuilding our roads and bridges and surface transport. These — so you have to ask a question, are they willing to tear down the economy in order to tear down the president or are they going to cooperate?

Emphasis in original.  Axelrod was, as Sargent reports, “pushing back on . . . Crowley’s suggestion that Obama bears some of the blame for Congress’s failure to act on the economy”.

Remember, this is the White House that crafted its jobs bill in secret without input from Republicans (throwing in ideas that they contended Republicans, as Axelrod put it, “traditionally have supported before”) and then demanded that Congress “pass this bill.”

Not just that, after all the concerns expressed about our burgeoning federal debt, the White House throws out a bill that increases federal spending.  And then blames Republicans.

Why isn’t this administration — and its party — able to acknowledge the opposition’s legitimate policy concerns?  Perhaps, they should find that politician who was “trying to break is a pattern in Washington where everybody is always looking for somebody else to blame.“”

It seems that in order to win reelection despite middling poll numbers and a lackluster economic recovery, the president has torn a page from the playbook of perhaps the most successful electoral comeback in American history, Harry S Truman’s “Give ‘Em Hell” campaign in 1948.  I mean, heck, the Democrats are already borrowing one of the Missourian’s key expressions from that fall, dubbing the current Republican Congress a “do-nothing” institution.

Only problem is that unlike his accomplished partisan predecessor (and at odds with administration talking points), the incumbent Democrat doesn’t face a Republican Congress.  The opposition controls only one chamber of the federal legislature.  His party controls the other chamber and it’s the real do-nothing body, not having based a budget in 914 days.

Another thing which distinguishes the “give ‘em hell” campaign of 1948 from Obama’s efforts is when the respective incumbents began their attacks.  Truman, as my preliminary research indicates, didn’t start going on the warpath until his party’s nominating convention in July 1948.  Obama began his attacks in earnest about the time he launched his reelection campaign in April 2011, a full fifteen months ahead in the 2012 cycle of Truman’s starting point in the 1948 cycle.

Wonder if any of the other post-World War II presidents running for reelection began their partisan attacks so far ahead of the presidential election campaign.  Bill Clinton, the most recent Democrat to occupy the Oval Office, had the good sense to run TV ads (outside major media markets) in 1995, linking the then-likely Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole to the then-increasingly unpopular House Speaker Newt Gingrich.  He, as I recall, kept his personal attacks to a minimum.

Will this strategy work? (more…)

It seems the president set the tone for the second half of his first term, his first experience as chief executive with a Republican House (but Democratic talking points notwithstanding, not a “Republican Congress” as his party still controls the Senate) on April 13 when he delivered a speech at George Washington University on the budget.

Supposedly he was going to unveil a new budget plan (he still hasn’t). The president invited House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan whose budget had won a lot of acclaim in conservative circles (and even some praise in liberal ones), but had largely been lambasted on the left.*  Instead of releasing his own plan, he spent the better part of his time attacking Republicans.

The House would pass Ryan’s budget two days later. The Democratic Senate hasn’t passed a budget in 913 days.

In his speech, the president would fault policies of the his predecessor for creating the federal spending problem, telling his audience that “we lost our way in the decade that followed” the 1990s.  But, after crediting Republicans for presenting and championing one vision, he went on to excoriate the plan:

But the way this plan achieves those goals would lead to a fundamentally different America than the one we’ve known certainly in my lifetime.  In fact, I think it would be fundamentally different than what we’ve known throughout our history.

I believe it paints a vision of our future that is deeply pessimistic.  It’s a vision that says if our roads crumble and our bridges collapse, we can’t afford to fix them. . . .

It’s a vision that says America can’t afford to keep the promise we’ve made to care for our seniors. . . .

This vision is less about reducing the deficit than it is about changing the basic social compact in America.

Even the Washington Post reported that the budget speech had a “partisan tone.”  Finding that the president “spent much of the afternoon speech at George Washington University criticizing [Ryan's] deficit-reduction plan, called ‘Path to Prosperity,’” the analysts at the Annenberg Center found that the Democrat’s “critique strayed at times from the facts.”

Seems the imperative was not telling the truth, but instead savaging the opposition.  On his various job tours in swing states, the president has attacked Republicans, mixed his partisan rhetoric with backward-looking class-warfare rhetoric (last link via Instapundit).

Which brings me to the title question:  Can the president make the case of his economic policies without demonizing the opposition and raising the specter of class warfare?

* (more…)

The president and his team often whine about the bad set of circumstances the Democrat has had to deal with, you know all those problems they “inherited” (as if their was the first administration to face problems left unresolved by the previous president.)  The Democrat’s chief of staff put it recently, “Considering the debacle that he came in with, the tough choices he’s made and how there have been few, if any breaks, he says it himself all the time. . . .”

President Obama, as Jim Geraghty (who linked the quote above) reminds us:

. . . has been using the “run of bad luck” line on the stump, too. He cites the Arab Spring as an economic headwind, but let’s face it, Egypt or Libya or Syria or one of the Gulf states could have completely collapsed from internal uprisings. He mentions the tsunami in Japan, which as we all recall was so traumatic to the president he could only cope by going over his March Madness picks with ESPN. Yet obviously that could have been much worse, spreading much more serious radioactivity over more-densely populated areas of Japan. He cites the European debt crises, and again, it’s not hard to imagine that circumstance turning out much worse – such as a collapse of the Euro or serious social unrest in Greece and elsewhere.

Nothing is ever the fault of Obama and the team around him. It’s just that the universe seems to enjoy disappointing him, I guess.

Emphasis added.  Maybe the president wouldn’t be as upset with the universe if he took the advice of that politician who told Jay Leno that “one of the things” he was “trying to break is a pattern in Washington where everybody is always looking for somebody else to blame.“

Take a gander at the headline that currently leads Yahoo!’s homepage:

So, here we have the President of the United States on a trip paid for with our tax dollars, attacking his partisan adversaries?!?

Must be that new kind of politics we heard tell about in the last presidential election.

FROM THE COMMENTS:  V the K quips, “Spending money he hasn’t earned lavishly. Typical 1%er.”

No wonder the president is running scared:

A majority of Americans expect Barack Obama to be a one-term president, an assessment on which, in past elections, the public more often has been right than wrong.

Just 37 percent in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll say they expect Obama to win re-election in November 2012; 55 percent instead expect the eventual Republican nominee to win.

And this poll tends to tilt slightly toward the Democrats.  No wonder the Obama campaign is going on the attack, slamming presumptive Republican frontrunners Rick Perry and Mitt Romney as out of the mainstream, with Ben LaBolt, press secretary for Obama’s re-election effort, writing, “They would return to policies that have been tried before and done nothing to improve economic security for the middle class, rewarding special interests who can afford to pay for lobbyists instead of looking out for working families.”

Good job, Mr. LaBolt, you can sure pack a lot of White House clichés into one sentence.

Now, what about the president’s policies which have increased economic anxiety in the middle class while rewarding special interests who can afford to pay for lobbyists and have connections to top Democrats, well, the campaign prefers not to talk about the president’s actual record as it would rather focus on the horrible, not good, very bad Republicans:

With a still-struggling economy and a base that remains less than enthused about the 2012 election, Obama must turn the race into a choice between two candidates, as opposed to a referendum on his first four years in office.

“Try to make the GOP candidate the issue in the election instead of Obama’s handling of the economy,” summarized Neil Newhouse, who is polling for Romney’s campaign, of the president’s strategy. “Good luck with that.”

Perhaps, as 1980, the race can be both a choice between the two candidates and a referendum on the incumbent.  And we all know how that turned out for the Democrats.

In an insightful post today on the Corner, Victor Davis Hanson sketches out the contours of the president’s 2012 campaign:

Was thinking in recent days about the president’s latest jobs bill and wondering if he really believes, given the current make-up of Congress, it is possible to “pass this bill.”

Seems he knows the Republican House will reject that big-spending bill, so he’s just promoting the legislation as means to demagogue this issue.  In today’s CampaignSpot, Jim Geraghty provides some evidence to buttress this theory:

White House press secretary Jay Carney declared, “The president is campaigning for jobs.” But instead of heading to states where there are persuadable senators, he’s heading to 2012 swing states.

As NBC News correspondent Norah O’Donnell noticed, Obama somehow feels the need to hold events to promote this legislation — again, the legislation, not his reelection bid — only in states that are considered in play in the 2012 presidential election.

NB: Tweaked the title.

UPDATE (from Eric): According to Illinois Senator Dick (US troops are Pol Pot, and others) Durbin, the Democrats will get to this incredibly important, “Pass This Jobs Bill Now” bill sometime next month:

But Obama did want to show how really urgent he said the situation was, even though it had taken him 961 days as president to say them. And even though from Day #1 of the brief Obama Era polls had shown jobs and the economy were the No. 1 priority among voters but he pursued healthcare and financial reforms first. And even though unemployment had been at or above 9% for 26 of the last 28 months.

So, given the president’s professed urgency, the next day, Sept. 9, everyone asked where was his jobs legislation?

And, well, it seems the urgent jobs bill hadn’t actually been written yet but should be ready in a week or two. When the laughter died, the White House said on second thought the legislation would be ready for a photo op the next Monday.

Well, here we are on the next Monday after that next Monday and we’ve just learned from the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, Dick Durbin, that actually it seems that body won’t really be seriously getting into the legislation for a while yet. The Senate has some other more important business to handle. And then there’s this month’s congressional vacation, which in Washington is called “a recess,” like elementary school.

Here’s the revealing exchange with a persistent host Candy Crowley on CNN’s “State of the Union:”

CROWLEY: When is the bill going to get on the floor?

DURBIN: The bill is on the calendar. Majority leader Reid moved it to the calendar. It is ready and poised. There are a couple other items we may get into this week not on the bill and some related issues that may create jobs. But we’re going to move forward on the president’s bill. There will be a healthy debate. I hope the Republicans will come to…

CROWLEY: After the recess, so next month? Or when will it actually begin to act on?

DURBIN: I think that’s more realistic it would be next month.

So, as of right now, “right now” uttered on Sept. 8 really means sometime at least one month later.

Good thing the president’s own Democratic party controls the Senate. Because, otherwise, there might be some kind of silly, unnecessary delays in deliberating Obama’s urgent jobs bill that he says will surely help the nation’s unemployed millions if only those Republicans don’t connive to slow things down.

As an Illinois constituent of Senator Durbin’s, I called his DC office and asked just when this “Pass This Jobs Bill Now” jobs bill would, indeed, be passed. A very nice young man named “Anthony” informed me that it would be passed just as soon as it was introduced. When asked when that might be, he confirmed the Senator’s estimation of, “sometime next month.”

This has gone beyond the realm of political theater, and has become “cirque du freak.”

h/t: Ace@AoSHQ

Hope:

“And one of the things that I’m trying to break is a pattern in Washington where everybody is always looking for somebody else to blame. . . .  the key thing is for everybody just to stay focused on doing the job instead of trying to figure out who you can pass blame on to.”  –Barack Obama, March 2009.

Change:

“As Failures Grow, Obama Blames Others.” (Via Ed Driscoll, via Glenn Reynolds.)  And as I noted last night, “Mr. Obama blames policies inherited from his predecessor’s administration for the soaring debt.“

“The latest posting by the Treasury Department” showing the national debt has increasing “by $4 trillion on President Obama’s watch” means that in the 2 years and 7 months since the Democrat took office, the nation has accumulated 82% of the debt it accumulated in 8 years under George W. Bush.

And someone thought we had been “living beyond our means” in the Bush era! ”

The debt,” reports Mark Knoller at CBS News, stood at “$10.626 trillion on the day Mr. Obama took office. The latest calculation from Treasury shows the debt has now hit $14.639 trillion“:

It’s the most rapid increase in the debt under any U.S. president.

The national debt increased $4.9 trillion during the eight-year presidency of George W. Bush. The debt now is rising at a pace to surpass that amount during Mr. Obama’s four-year term.

Mr. Obama blames policies inherited from his predecessor’s administration for the soaring debt. He singles out:

• “two wars we didn’t pay for”
• “a prescription drug program for seniors…we didn’t pay for.”
• “tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 that were not paid for.”

Um, Mr. Obama, we elected you to fix the problems you repeatedly refer to as “inherited.”  You don’t fix them by blaming your predecessor, but by offering solutions.

Oh, and since we’re talking about things we didn’t pay for, what about that $800 billion dollar “stimulus” that Congress passed when Democrats were in charge?

H/t Gateway Pundit.

Do the editors of Yahoo! think it helps President Obama to show him more than two-and-one-half years into his term whining about the mess he “inherited”:

He sounds not like a leader who has successfully pushed his policies through the legislature, but a man who has just taken charge of a failing company:

President Barack Obama said on Monday he inherited many of the country’s problems with high debt and deficits when he entered the White House, sounding a theme likely to dominate his 2012 re-election campaign.

Speaking at a Democratic fundraiser, where families paid $15,000 to get a picture with him, Obama defended his economic record and noted that problems in Europe were affecting the United States.

“We do have a serious problem in terms of debt and deficit, and much of it I inherited,” Obama said.

At some point, he needs to take responsibility for the failure of his policies to achieved their desired effect and that he knew he’d be inheriting when he applied for the job?

And now instead of rolling up his sleeves to fix the problems, he’s looking forward to campaigning against Republicans, “What we’re going to have is 16 months in which we debate this vision for America, and it’s going to be as fundamental a debate as 2008″.

Sixteen months of debate?

What bout twelve months of hard work?  Putting forward plans and policies to show he knows what he’s doing and merits another four years in the White House.

I mean, he doesn’t have a Democratic primary opponent and the actual campaign won’t ramp up until next summer’s conventions.  Seems he’d rather campaign for the presidency than do his job.

FROM THE COMMENTS:  ILoveCapitalism offers, “The President’s job is to fix inherited messes; otherwise, why have him?” Indeed.

UPDATE:  Turns out Obama’s current whining it at odds with his own rhetoric.  Jim Geraghty alerts us to an RNC ad which reminds us what the president said just six months after taking office:

The RNC can be cruel sometimes, reminding us all that back in July 2009, Obama declared, “My administration has a job to do as well. That job is to get this economy back on its feet. That’s my job, and it’s a job I gladly accept. (more…)

Seems the Democratic talking point of the weekend is “Tea Party Downgrade,” with John Kerry, David Axelrod and Howard Dean all using the expression to blame the downgrade in the nation’s credit rating.  Yahoo! even included Democrats’ talking point in its news headline yesterday:

John McCain, Ed Morrissey notes, begged to differ:

We could have reached an agreement a lot earlier, but the members of the House of Representatives had a mandate last November, and it was jobs and the economy and it was spending. And for them to then agree to tax increases and spending increases was obviously a repudiation of the mandate they felt they had from last November

Emphasis added.  ”McCain,” Morrissey added “gets this one right”:

Voters sent a clear message in last year’s midterms, and it wasn’t “spend more and increase taxes.”  Democrats refused to listen in 2009 when voters revolted over the addition of another massive entitlement program; voters spent all of 2010 revolting over Obamanomics; and they punished Democrats in November for not listening to them.  Democrats still aren’t listening, and the way they are reacting now, 2012 may make 2010 look like a good year for the Democratic Party.

Well, that all depends on the success of the Democrats’ slash and burn strategy.  At least, this talking points helps Republicans prepare for 2012 as the Democrats have given us yet another foretaste of Obama’s 2012 campaign theme:  attack Republicans!  Blame the Tea Party!

Andrew Malcolm reflects on Obama’s leadership style as manifested in recent negotiations with congressional Republicans:

Obama will, no doubt, have more to say about the deal today. See if he throws in more sour grapes as he did after the GOP won its Bush tax cut extensions in last December’s talks. Back then, Obama, who promised to bring both sides together if elected in 2008, called his fellow deal-makers “hostage-takers.”

. . . .

Obama stepped into the stalled talks in recent weeks. He never offered his own new debt reduction plan, but used several public statements and closed White House meetings to show executive leadership and criticize other plans.

He used his poll-tested “balanced approach” demand numerous times (meaning more taxes as well as spending cuts) and sent aides like David Plouffe out to repeat how Republicans were demanding “my way or the highway.”

Via Instapundit.  Read the whole thing

Wasn’t Obama the guy who was “trying to break is a pattern in Washington where everybody is always looking for somebody else to blame.“

It seems an article blaming the deficit on George W. Bush (of which I took note late Tuesday night (PST)) originated in a chart the White House developed.

Economics writers Megan McArdle was not as “enamored” with the chart as was one of her Atlantic colleagues:

. . . considering that this graph attributes decisions made by Obama and an all-Democratic Congress–like doubling down in Afghanistan–to Bush, while taking responsibility for basically nothing except the stimulus.  When Obama extends the Bush tax cuts for the rich under pressure from Congressional Republicans, that disappears from his side of the ledger, because after all, he didn’t want to do it.  When Bush enacts Medicare Part D under pressure from Congressional Democrats, the full cost is charged against his presidency.  The list of such silliness goes on.  Our president seems set to coin another presidential motto: “The duck starts here.”

Read the whole thing.  (Via Instapundit.)  Interesting that the White House would divert federal resources (you know those in short supply) to putting together a graphic attempting to exonerate the incumbent for the current debt crisis while passing the blame onto his predecessor.

Observing how the deficit skyrocketed from 1.6% (as a percentage of GDP) under Bush to 10% under Obama, this sage blogress asks, “What changed about Bush policies that made them so much more expensive once Barack Obama took office?”

McArdle adds that she’s not “interested in the Bush-v-Obama, red-v-blue allocation of blame, but the [White House] graph . . . was made by someone who seems very interested indeed in allocating as much blame as possible to Republicans–indeed, more interested in that than anything else.”

Wish this White House has heeded the advice of the guy who said he was “trying to break is a pattern in Washington where everybody is always looking for somebody else to blame.“

Once again, instead of providing a plan, President Obama blames his predecessor for his problems:

Does President Obama even read what is put in the teleprompter before he delivers it? On Monday night, Obama claimed that “because neither party is blameless for the decisions that led to this problem, both parties have a responsibility to solve it.” But just three paragraphs earlier, Obama put the blame for our $14.3 trillion debt squarely on President George W. Bush, claiming that “trillions of dollars in new tax cuts,” “two wars” and “an expensive prescription drug program” caused government surpluses to turn into annual deficits. This despite the fact that in only three years Obama’s spending has added $3.7 trillion to the national debt.

Monday night was not the only time Obama has schizophrenically shifted between demagogic finger pointing and patronizing lecturing. In fact, the speech provided an illustration of the central reason he has failed to provide the kind of presidential leadership that is crucial to solving the debt-limit crisis. “I won’t bore you with the details,” Obama said of his secret budget plan. But the biggest problem with Obama’s approach so far is that he has never bothered with any details. The White House has been negotiating with congressional leaders for months, yet Obama has never committed any of his offers to paper. The result has been a steady flood of leaks, counterleaks, speeches and news conferences about what was, or was not, in the latest rejected offer. This environment, created entirely by Obama, created only mistrust and ill will between the parties.

Read the whole thing.

Well, if we can really lay the blame at the feet of George W. Bush, we should remember that man has long since retired to Texas (over two-and-one-half years ago).

Running against said Mr. Bush and touting himself as an improvement on the Texan,  Mr. B. Obama was elected to clean up his messes.  Instead of complaining, he should start put forward his plan to fix the problems W. supposed created.  Alas, that most plans he has put forward only make the problem worse, you know, like further adding to our national debt.